Brahmana

The Brahmanas (/ˈbrɑːmənəz/; Sanskrit: ब्राह्मणम्, IAST: Brāhmaṇam) are Vedic śruti works attached to the Samhitas (hymns and mantras) of the Rig, Sama, Yajur, and Atharva Vedas.

Quotes

• If, therefore, we limit the age of the Brahmanas to the two centuries from 600 to 800 b.c., it is more likely that hereafter these limits will have to be extended than that they will prove too wide.
  • Max Muller A History Of Ancient Sanskrit Literature in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12

• Considering, therefore, that the Brahmana period must comprehend the first establishment of the threefold ceremonial, the composition of separate Brahmanas, the formation of Brahmana-charanas, and the schism between old and new Charanas, and their various collections, it would seem impossible to bring the whole within a shorter space than 200 years. Of course this is merely conjectural; but it would require a greater stretch of imagination to account for the production in a smaller number of years of that mass of Brahmanic literature which still exists, or is known to have existed. Were we to follow the traditions of the Brahmanas themselves, we should have . much less difficulty in accounting for the great variety of authors quoted, and of opinions stated in the Brahmanas. They contain lists of teachers through whom the Brahmanas were handed down, which would extend the limits of this age to a very considerable...
  • Max Muller A History Of Ancient Sanskrit Literature

• The chronological limits assigned to the Shtra and Brahmana periods will seem to most Sanskrit scholars too narrow rather than too wide, and if we assign but 200 years to the Mantra period, from 800 to 1000 b.c., and an equal number to the Ohhandas period, from 1000 to 1200 B.O., we can do so only under the supposition that during the early periods of history the growth of the human mind was more luxuriant than in later times, and that the layers of thought were formed less slowly in the primary than in the tertiary ages of the world.
  • Max Muller A History Of Ancient Sanskrit Literature

• We must confess that we are disposed to look upon this limit |two hundred years for the Brahmanas] as much too brief for the establishment of an elaborate ritual, for the appropriation of all the spiritual authority by the Brahmans, for the distinctions of races or the institutions of caste, and for the mysticism and speculation of the Aranyakas or Upanishads: a period of five centuries would not seem to be too protracted for such a complete remodelling of the primitive system and its wide dissemination through all those parts of India where the Brahmans have spread.
  • H. H. Wilson (1860) objecting to Muller's methodology: in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 12